


No place like home

by Petra LeMaitre (Petra)



Category: Promethean Age Series - Elizabeth Bear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra%20LeMaitre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no love in Faerie, but this is not Faerie, as Kit and Murchaud both know well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No place like home

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Moontyger for a quick beta read.
> 
> Written for Jenavira.

 

 

The house on the plain of Hell was small and appropriately warm, its walls warm gray and its roof terra cotta tile. There was little to be said for its appearance but that it was a home; it was not the fine mansion Murchaud had used to entertain others in his royal rank. The only bed was too large to leave the bedroom by any normal means; the kitchen low-ceilinged and thick with smoke. Most any visiting winged dignitary would find the doorway cramped enough that he would perforce enter sideways.

It made Kit smile to look upon it, to stand straight and slim as he walked under its low lintel. "'Tisn't anything like a home." Not a London apartment with Will bent over his desk, nor a fine half-timbered home for Tom and Audrey.

"Nor is the palace thy Lucifer built me," Murchaud said, his smile wavering but not extinguished. "But what would thou, sweet Kit?"

Kit touched Murchaud's hand. The warmth of his skin was startling and sharp, a teind away from Faerie and years from the world of iron. Hell could be a place of stagnation, but only for those who expected a change. This change was new and painful: the birth of hope where he had never looked for it. "Where shall I begin?" He shook his head and answered himself. "With what I might have, no doubt."

"An thou hast any true desires." Murchaud kissed his cheek, another shock of heat.

"There is no love in Faerie," Kit said, his voice rising to bardic tones, "but we are not there now, my love."

The endearment might have been an epithet in song for all the truth that lay behind it. In Kit's speech, Murchaud was as necessarily beloved as dawn was rosy-fingered. But Kit's voice caught on it, and there was something more than rote. "Why this is hell," said Murchaud.

Kit scoffed, his fair cheeks heating with a flush. He stopped Murchaud's words with a rakehell's kiss, immortal and human enough to dare Hell again as if he had no fear of it. The fear was what brought him; what kept him was something more. "And I do love thee," he said softly, "as well as my own soul."

"If it is so weak a love as that, why follow me?" Murchaud asked in the habits he had learned in Faerie, twisting the words.

Kit touched his lips. "Mock me not, not here. Thou knowest the truth."

The road to Hell had been long for both of them, and no novelty lay in the journey. "Had I a soul, I might well love thee as I would it." Murchaud's smile was wry, and there was a heat in his eyes that had nothing to do with lust and all to do with the possibility of love, for love was its own torment.

Kit embraced him then, in the doorframe of the little house, and felt Murchaud's chest rise with a deep breath. Hell's air was none too sweet, and it brought new-blossoming hope because, without that hope, there would be nothing left to ache.

But a man could live in the hope for as long as he could, and so they would.

 


End file.
